Initially opened in 1914 as the Hotel Stevenson, today The Hamilton pays tribute to the city’s most successful Black architect and is a fine example of historic preservation.
Built by a fishy dude
The Hotel Stevenson was an eight-story, steel–framed apartment building rectangular in plan. Its front facade is narrow and done in the Neo-Georgian style. It was built to serve Detroit’s growing population and growing need for housing for workers moving to the city to work in its many factories. The apartment-hotel offered longer stays with all the amenities of a hotel, such as housekeeping and room service. The Stevenson was built by Charles Hugh Stevenson, the secretary-treasurer of the Davenport Realty Co., who was also a lawyer and author on all things tied to fish.
Stevenson was born Dec. 6, 1869, in Snow Hill, Md., and attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., before finishing his legal education at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. From 1891 to 1909, he was an assistant to the U.S. Fish Commission, and served as a special agent of the census bureau. He co-wrote “The Book of the Pearl: The History, Art, Science and Industry of the Queen of Gems” in 1908 with George Frederick Kunz, which is considered one of the most comprehensive dives into all things about the gemstone. In 1909, his “International Regulation of Fisheries on the High Seas” was published by the Smithsonian Institute. He also published works with such gripping titles as “Fishery Legislation,” “Fisher Products in Arts and Industries,” “Foreign Fishery Trade,” “Oyster Industry,” “Preservation of Fishery Products” and “The Shad Fisheries,” among others.
In 1908, he was awarded the Smithsonian Prize at the fourth International Fishery Congress. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was heavily involved in the American Fisheries Society, as well as the Detroit Zoological Society.
The guy was just really into fish.
But he also was into real estate, and co-founded Davenport Realty with his father-in-law, Richard Helson. The firm was incorporated Oct. 14, 1913, taking its name from Davenport Street, where the company planned to build the apartment-hotel. Just four days later, on Oct. 18, 1913, the project was issued building permit No. 11,162. It appears to be the only project Davenport Realty developed.
Stevenson would serve as vice president of the Detroit Hotel Association in the 1920s. He also received two awards from the French government, in 1900 and 1909: a gold medal from the Exposition Department of the French government for his participation in the Paris-International Exposition, and a gold cross from the French minister of the interior for his participation in the International Hotel Convention in Paris.
‘Quiet dignity’ and noisy neighbors
The Stevenson was open for business by October 1914, offering furnished or unfurnished suites of one, two or three rooms with a private bathroom. For the well-heeled, there were four- and five-room options with two bathrooms. Early ads boasted that the building was an “absolute fireproof structure” and offered “every modern comfort and convenience” for “exclusive clientele” while being close to the business and shopping districts. Its eighth floor was “devoted exclusively to bachelors,” advertisements said.
"You can attend the active events of the day, assured that a restful home in perfect order and a tempting dinner in a shining dining room are waiting for you when you live at Hotel Stevenson," an ad in the Sept. 2, 1925, edition of The Detroit News promised. "Its established reputation for quiet dignity, and the completeness of its well-planned service, attract and keep Hotel Stevenson families permanently content at 40 Davenport St."
Weston Gales, conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, took an apartment in the Stevenson in October 1914. William Bachman, an apparently well-known singer in 1916, and his new bride, Dorothy, lived there, too. The hotel made frequent appearances in the society pages of newspapers, either for hosting events, galas and banquets, or for becoming the home of the city’s upper crust.
In June 1916, a rather humorous legal battle ensued. Alice M. Service and Mary A. Houghton were residents of the Stevenson, paying $90 and $55 a month, respectively, for their apartments - the equivalent of about $2,600 and $1,600 in 2025, when adjusted for inflation. Their leases contained clauses that said the renters were to occupy their units "in peace and quiet." However, the women sued, saying that "even conversations intended to be private and carried on in ordinary tones easily came to the reluctant ears of both Mrs. Service and Mrs. Houghton," the Detroit Free Press reported June 7, 1918.
Davenport Realty Co. said the Stevenson was built using the most modern methods and that its walls were not sound-conveying. Judge Adolph F. Marschner said he would visit the women's apartments, taking a court officer with him who would "talk in various tones in the neighboring apartments" in order to decide whether the walls were indeed too thin. Unfortunately, it does not appear that any of the papers followed up on the case, so its outcome is unknown.
The Taft and Milner Arms era
In 1926, Charles Stevenson and his wife, Elizabeth, separated. She filed for divorce several years later, citing she had caught him in an affair. In May 1932, Charles Stevenson claimed that the ordeal led him into bankruptcy and sought to have his alimony payments reduced from $150 a month (about $3,500 in 2025) to $40 (about $940), saying he earned only $100 a month (about $2,300). The judge reduced his alimony to $100.
It’s unclear whether that meant Stevenson was forking over every penny he had, but by 1940, the Stevenson was owned by Milner Hotels Inc., becoming one of nine properties it ran in Detroit and Highland Park during that era. By November 1940, the hotel had been rebranded the Hotel Taft, and its rooms were advertised at $1 to $1.50 a day ($23 to $34 in 2025), with free parking. At those rates, the glitz and glamour of the hotel’s early days had clearly lost some of their luster.
Stevenson died July 30, 1943, at age 73. Interestingly, despite being a member of the Woodmere Cemetery Association, he was buried in his native Snow Hill, Md.
In 1947, ads began appearing for Yacos Muscle-Building Gym inside the Taft Hotel - "Michigan's largest physique-building gym." Its 206 apartments were going for $7 to $12 a week (about $84 to $145 in 2025 valuation) in the early 1950s.
On April 12, 1957, it was announced that Milner was converting the Taft Hotel into senior housing.
"They'll be able to get all kinds of medical attention and be conveniently near theaters, stores and all of the services needed for daily living," H.J. Daldin, president of Milner Hotels Management Co., told the Detroit Free Press for a story the following morning. "There are a lot of hotels around the country dragging by their heels. We'd like to pick them up, buy them or lease them for this purpose."
Monthly rates would range from $37.50 with two in a room (about $430 in 2025) to $53 (about $600) for a private room. Daldin said the Taft had about 100 permanent guests at the time of the announcement, and their average age was in their late 50s.
In February 1962, it was going by the name the Milner-Taft Hotel, and in 1966, the Taft was rebranded the Milner Arms Apartments. The senior living experiment was dropped, and the building underwent a significant remodeling. Ads in 1967 claimed that the Milner Arms offered "castle luxury on a cottage budget."
On Nov. 26, 1970, Oscar Charles Crowder, the 54-year-old building manager, was found shot in the back of the head on the seventh floor landing of the Milner Arms. His wife said he had gone to replace a light bulb on the seventh floor. If the murder was ever solved, none of the papers appear to have written about it.
It would continue to operate under the Milner name and flag for the next several decades without much incident. At some point, its 206 units were consolidated down to 93. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Sept. 22, 1997.
Honoring one of Detroit’s finest
On March 22, 2016, the Milner company sold the building to an entity affiliated with Birmingham, Mich.-based Broder & Sachse Real Estate Services. The purchase price was not disclosed. At the time, the Milner Arms had 68 studios ranging from 250 to 600 square feet; 22 one-bedroom units measuring about 800 square feet; and three two-bedroom units at about 1,020 square feet.
“Buildings like the Milner are critical to preserving the great history of the city of Detroit, and we feel honored to have the opportunity to restore this important property,” Richard Broder, CEO of Broder & Sachse, was quoted as saying in a March 24, 2016, article in Crain’s Detroit Business. “We chose to purchase this property for many reasons, including the ideal location. The Milner is situated at the southern apex of Midtown, among strong community anchors and a wide range of developments.”
The Milner Arms was the final Detroit property in the Milner Hotels Inc. portfolio, as the company previously had sold its Milner Hotel downtown in October 2012, which was then turned into The Ashley.
Broder & Sachse set out to renovate the old hotel and turn it into classy apartments that had become in demand in Detroit’s Cass Corridor/Midtown area. To their credit, the developers paid to relocate the building’s existing tenants so that the renovation could proceed, and then offered them units in the completed building at close to the rents they had previously been paying.
Sachse Construction served as general contractor, and Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates was hired to serve as the project’s architect, landscape architect and interior designer. What was more, it was decided to name the building after Hamilton Anderson’s legendary co-founder, president and CEO, Rainy Hamilton Jr.
Hamilton, a graduate of Cass Tech High School and the University of Detroit Mercy, worked for the legendary Detroit firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (today known as SmithGroup) before founding his own firm with Kent Anderson in 1993. The award-winning firm has handled a number of adaptive reuse projects, not just in Detroit but around the country. It now has a team of more than 500 design professionals and has achieved sales of nearly $300 million, making it one of the largest and most successful Black-owned architecture firms in the country.
In Detroit, the firm has worked on everything from Chene Park to the Grayhaven Marina Village, to a master plan for Belle Isle Park to The Children's Center and Detroit Public Schools system to Little Caesars Arena, the redevelopment of the Hudson’s site and the Motown Museum expansion.
“To be able to rebuild Detroit one home, one block, one neighborhood at a time is exactly why Hamilton Anderson is here and exactly why we’re headquartered here,” Hamilton told Hour Detroit magazine for its January 2022 edition.
Work on The Hamilton was completed in 2018, and in 2021, the project received the Detroit American Institute of Architects Award for Historic Rehabilitation.
The organization’s judges said that “The Hamilton perfectly exemplifies the dynamic future of Detroit while simultaneously acknowledging and preserving this piece of its glorious past.”